


The Encounter

by lutzaussi



Series: One Summer's Day/Always With Me [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9184597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lutzaussi/pseuds/lutzaussi
Summary: Sakura does not want to have to go fight Uchiha Itachi, but she is also willing to do anything to keep her family safe.





	

The thing with Ino and Kiba is natural and organic and Sakura is not to worried about putting a label on it. And their relationship seems to mostly just confuse everyone around them, which Sakura is also okay with.

She’s grown fond of perplexing people.

Ino doesn’t really understand that, but Kiba does. They do understand each other very well, despite that, and when the other two move in after Naruto and Sasuke leave it gives Sakura some ease of mind. Life with the two of them even then is easy and almost a relief after knowing all about Akatsuki and the future potentially facing them.

Sakura and Ino both work at the hospital, but on top of that Sakura also has her duties for Tsunade and Ino has missions regularly, whether with her team or on her own. Kiba also has missions, and he and Hinata and Shino still regularly get together to train, but they are all usually at least home for dinner and sleep and maybe some extracurriculars that occur before sleep.

They fall into a routine, like that, and even when Naruto and Sasuke return and Anko gets married, their routine holds.

While working, Sakura hears about almost everything that happens in Konoha before it happens, but sometimes it means that she is sworn to secrecy on matters of importance. Occasionally, those matters have to do with her adopted family, and those times are the worst.

She is in Tsunade’s office when the remnants of a four-person squad of ANBU return with news of Uchicha Itachi, a couple months after the mission in Sunagakure to rescue Gaara. Their former captain is dead, one of them is missing an arm, and they and the third are immediately hospitalized for severe wounds.

The last nin is in better shape, but is still hospitalized after dropping off the mission paperwork, and Sakura accompanies her master and the medic nin who had fetched them. The instant they make it to the closed room where the ANBU is the woman croaks out, “Uchiha.” And Tsunade’s face straightens to blankness, she hand-signs for Sakura to set up a barrier inside the room.

“What happened?” the Hokage says, sitting down on the end of the bed and resting a hand on the woman’s leg, letting chakra drift softly around her body to heal her bruises and cuts.

Sakura stands back, near the half-closed curtains of the window, and she does not move, does not breathe as the woman speaks.

“We were intercepted on the border with the Land of Water, two combatants,” the woman says, breath coming easier with Tsunade’s help, “Uchiha Itachi, and another missing-nin that Saito recognized from the bingo book. We did not look to engage, because we were returning, but they must have sensed us travelling. Keiko was dead before Saito and I could react, and we only managed to get away after Aiko did some of her fancy footwork.”

“Status of Uchiha and the missing-nin?” Tsunade asks, trying to stay level.

The woman shakes her head, says, “We immediately tried to disengage, so their wounds were nominal at best.”

“Anything else, anything you remember?”

She looks exhausted, but her eyes sharpen and she looks up at Tsunade. “Uchiha asked about his brother--no, not asked, I think that if he had managed to capture us he would’ve had us tell where his brother is,” she says, tapping her chin with one finger as she thinks, “but he did not use the Sharingan, for whatever that is worth.”

There is silence for a few moments, all of them thinking over what had happened.

“Rest, Hibiki,” Tsunade says eventually, managing a small, pained smile. “I’ll pass around assignments.”

The woman nods, and as soon as she is lying prone again she falls asleep.

When they get back to Tsunade’s office the woman’s lips are so tightly pressed together they are white, and Sakura feels sick knowing that she can’t tell anyone what she just learned. Tsunade just needs to look at her and she knows that as well. The woman doesn’t sit down, but goes to her cabinet and pours them each a shallow shot of sake.

“I wouldn’t normally,” she says, and she means it when she hands a cup to Sakura, “but I think today deserves it.”

Sakura looks at her master, looks at the sake, and downs the entire thing. “What is going to be done?” she asks, because even Tsunade should know that she _needs_ to know, Sasuke is her family now.

Tsunade closes the cabinet, goes and sits at her desk and from the furrow of her eyebrows Sakura can tell that she is giving it serious thought.

“I would prefer to wait until Saito is awake and Aiko is coherent enough to give us more information, but,” she steeples her hands in front of her face, “I doubt that Uchiha Itachi would wait that long. Three squads of ANBU, your team, and Gai’s team will go out tomorrow. Shizune!” she bellows, pulls a pen out and starts scribbling down on some paper, while still speaking to Sakura, “You will apprehend Uchiha Itachi and the missing-nin that he was travelling with, most likely the same one who was with him three and a half years ago. It will not be a capture mission, but a kill mission.”

Shizune comes into the room and begins pulling out the paperwork that Tsunade needs while the Hokage herself starts calling the ANBU squads she will need.

Sakura still feels as if she will be sick.

“Sakura,” Tsunade pulls her out of her own mind, tapping her pen against her desk, “go home. Get ready.”

“Should I--should I tell them?” Sakura asks, when she’s half-way out of the door, and she almost doesn’t want Tsunade to answer because either way it will be horrible.

“If you think that it will not cause,” the woman pauses, “undue harm.”

And Sakura knows what that means, knows that Tsunade is thinking of Sasuke and how he will react.

In all truth, though, Sakura is more worried about Naruto.

She arrives home in a daze, just in time for dinner, and she knows that Kiba and Ino and probably also Iruka are worried about her by the time that she drops her chopsticks the second time. After helping clean up, Kiba and Ino drag her to the secondary house.

“What’s wrong?” Ino is the first to ask, letting go of Sakura so she can tug her hair down and unzip her standard issue vest.

Kiba wraps his arms around Sakura and nuzzles her, and when he usually scents her it’s enough to make her blush, but today…

“Uh,” she considers, lets Kiba hand her off to Ino on the couch so they can sandwich her, “just, between us? For now?”

“Mm,” Kiba rumbles, and Ino nods.

“Itachi. We’re--my team, and four other teams, we’re are going after him, tomorrow,” it’s a relief to say it.

“Ita--” Ino’s eyes are wide, her eyes are _terrified_ , “Does Sasuke know?”

“No, I,” Sakura bites her lip, lets Kiba wrap her in a hug and Akamaru set his head and paws on her lap, “I need to tell him. We just found out today.”

“Who else is going?” Kiba asks, finally saying something over the shaking of his arms.

“Gai-sensei’s team,” she says, and she feels much more calm about it now that somebody else knows, “three ANBU squads.”

The other two--and Akamaru--seem less tense at that, but Ino still throws her arms around Sakura as well, and the two hug her so tightly that Sakura wants to cry.

“Go tell Sasuke,” Ino says, ever the practical one, once she has released Sakura. Kiba squeezes her just a little tighter before doing the same.

“But,” he adds, “maybe not Naruto.”

Sakura manages to huff out at least the semblance of a laugh, and once Akamaru has licked her cheek and gotten off of her legs, she flickers into the main house.

Sasuke isn’t hard to find, because he’s usually one of two places after dinner--his and Naruto’s bedroom, or the main room. The main room, this time, and Sakura just needs to hand-sign the words ‘private’ and ‘talk’ and he excuses himself from whatever Anko and Kakashi and Naruto are arguing about, follows her out to the back engawa where they are alone.

He looks concerned, because that is his general state of being, but Sakura thinks that it’s probably keyed up by her own very obvious stress. “An ANBU team ran across Itachi last night,” she says, makes sure her eyes never leave his while she speaks, and makes sure that she says every word she needs to, “He’s looking for you, as far as they could gather, and Tsunade-shishou is sending us out tomorrow morning.”

Sasuke doesn’t look anything except shocked, but Sakura can tell that he is mentally reeling when he asks, “He’s, looking? For me?”

Sakura nods slowly, takes Sasuke’s hand when he shakily reaches it out, and she’s never been as close with Sasuke as she is with Naruto, but she is more than willing to ground him. “Shishou would prefer to wait until we have more information, but she wants us to find out what’s going on,” Sakura says, and it is Sasuke’s turn to nod, and after he releases her hand he pulls her into a tight hug.

“Thank you for not telling Naruto,” Sasuke says when he pulls away. “What time?”

“Probably five or six,” Sakura replies, “Tsunade-shishou was putting together ANBU teams. I’m going to tell ‘tou-san.”

Sasuke nods, lets his head drop. “I’ll get ready. And,” he pauses, when she opens the shoji again, “I’ll deal with Naruto.”

Sakura lets out a sigh of relief at that, trudges through the rooms past Naruto and Anko and Ibiki until she finds Iruka and Kakashi in the kitchen with tea. Iruka’s grading papers at the table and Kakashi is just sitting there, staring at him, and Sakura almost wants to laugh to see him so infatuated. She slides into a seat, knowing that she might as well tell both of them, because Iruka will be able to parse it out anyway.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” she says, lets her chin rest on her hands. Kakashi looks at her, but Iruka doesn’t for a moment.

He sits back and sighs, rubs the scar across his nose and asks, “Itachi?”

Sakura nods, once, and isn’t surprised that he has figured it out. Iruka has always been good at reading people through their actions.

“He and another missing-nin incapacitated an ANBU squad,” she explains, “apparently he wanted to find out about Sasuke.”

Kakashi sighs, removes his headband and rubs his eyes, “Well, it was going to happen at some point.”

She leaves them shortly after that, returns to the secondary house where Kiba and Ino are laying on top of each other on the couch and Akamaru is watching the kettle in the kitchen. Sakura leaves them be, slips into their shared room and pulls her extra weapons, the ones she doesn’t carry around day-to-day, out of the closet. A tanto, given to her by her parents after becoming a chuunin, three pouches of poison-tipped senbon, a medical kit with bandages and sutures and common poison antidotes, and a whole cache of explosive tags.

When her bags are packed and she has her armguards and everything else ready for the morning, she goes and lays on top of Kiba, who is on top of Ino, and falls asleep.

They are ready to go at exactly five the next morning, and Sakura forces herself to eat even though the nerves make her stomach twist. It is less than a day’s journey to where the border of the Land of Fire meets the Land of Water, but at the frenetic pace with which the five teams set out, they are there within hours of leaving Konoha. Two of the ANBU squads, infiltration squads used to undercover work, scatter to assess the location of their target, and the rest of them wait spread out in a particularly thick patch of bushes and undergrowth.

They don’t have long to wait, and within ten minutes both squads are back, and in a flurry of hand-signs it is communicated that their target is ten miles to the south, heading north toward them.

Kakashi is unofficially in charge because--it’s Kakashi. Once he has their attention he rapidly signs orders--Gai’s squad is to engage the missing-nin with the assistance of one of the ANBU squads, one of the ANBU squads is to stay back and be ready to return to Konoha at a moment’s notice, and the remaining ANBU squad and his own team will be engaging Itachi.

Naruto looks almost pleased at that, and Sakura reminds and promises herself that she is not taking an active role, she is going to be in her standard role of medic nin and that means she can’t get hurt.

She sort of breaks that promise when she, in the first movement anyone makes after intercepting the two men, punches the missing nin so hard in the face he flies back far enough not to be a problem. From the look on Kakashi’s face after that, he seems grateful but also suffering from a headache, and Sakura hopes she won’t have to explain that to Iruka when they return.

She slips back with one of the ANBU shadowing her, the others spreading out to assist. Gai and his team take off after the missing-nin, and squad of ANBU after them while Sasuke engages Itachi.

It is almost immediately clear that this fight is not one that anyone but the two brothers can participate in, because Itachi is already encased in the skeletal beginnings of Susano-o, it’s orange form protecting him from any attacks that come at him. With one swipe of a flaming hand, he forces Sakura and Kakashi back, and then everything really goes to hell.

Two more men wearing the robes of Akatsuki intercept them and the ANBU, and one of the ANBU is already down. Sakura intercepts the man wearing the mouse mask before he collapses, hands him off to the dragon-masked woman that has been shadowing her after cursorily closing his wounds.

One of the men has a massive red scythe with three blades that Sakura ducks under, only to be faced by the other man, who extends his hand way too far to grab her around one leg. She digs into the ground, plants one fist in the earth and unsheathes the tanto on her back with the other. The cloaked man wrenches her leg so hard her ankle breaks, with a sharp, audible crack, but then she buries the blade into his hand, sees the threads that are holding his arm to his body and draws the tanto out, pulls her legs up so he will follow and cuts those threads. With her un-damaged foot she boots the arm to where Kakashi is or was, and it’s quite satisfying to see it incinerated.

Now that she’s free she jumps back, lets the dragon ANBU cover her again and, saying a pre-emptive apology to her master, she releases her seal and blue-black markings swim over her face.

The broken ankle is not really a problem at that point, because with her seal released any damage done to her person is instantly negated. She doesn’t know where the hell the other two nin came from, but she does know they need to draw them off before they interfere with Sasuke and Itachi. Hand-signs flurry from her hands to Kakashi, and Naruto slips behind her, so they are back to back and can yell at each other.

“Cover Sasuke,” she yells, dragging Naruto down with her so the massive fire ninjutsu one of the nin directed at them went over their heads, “‘tou-san and I can distract them, the extra ANBU team sent a person to fetch another team from the village.”

“Are you sure--” Naruto breaks off, backflips over a triple-bladed scythe and sends a spray of wind-shuriken at the grey-haired man laughing at them.

“Yes, I’m sure!” Sakura bellows, slapping an explosive tag over the chain-attached end of the scythe before dancing away to avoid another spout of billowing fire from the other nin. Naruto disappears after Itachi and Sasuke, who's nearly matching rust orange and golden Susano-o are barely visible over the treetops.

The chain-like cable that allowed the grey-haired man to throw his scythe with ease is broken, but he is no less dangerous when Sakura engages him again. The tanto is more useful, if only because Sakura can keep some distance between them. The dragon-mask ANBU has a sword and she seems to fare a bit better but--

There’s something _wrong_ about the man, he doesn’t lag or seem to feel any of the wounds or damage that they inflict and when he scores a hit on the ANBU he actually _laughs_ before he licks her blood off of the scythe.

Sakura immediately goes on the defensive when he drops a spear from one sleeve, stabs himself through the foot and uses the blood that puddles to draw, with his foot, a perfect circle with a triangle inside of it. “What is he…?” the ANBU breathes, landing next to Sakura on a tree branch above the man.

It becomes apparent very quickly, when his skin goes black and his bones are picked out on white against it, and he drives the spear through his hand and screams with glee when the same wound appears on the ANBU. Her breathing is even but choked, and Sakura has to bat down panic. She’s read some, about Jashin and the things that the god’s followers were supposed to be able to do and if she remembers her reading right--the old, dusty books that Tsunade gave her when she ran out of medical things to study--and if what she is seeing is not somehow a hallucination, she needs to get the enemy nin out of his blood-circle.

But he gets in two abdominal wounds, quickly, as if trying to distract her, but Sakura catchs the ANBU, brings her down to the ground.

She catches her breath, and disappears from the ground and reappears from the side to knock him out of the circle, saying a silent apology to the ANBU, who is already on the ground, bleeding from the two wounds in her abdomen. Sakura is torn because her duty, the one thing that Tsunade has drilled into her head, is to never leave a fallen comrade, especially if they are capable of saving, but she also knows that if the grey-haired man gets back to the circle he will kill her.

The decision is made for her, though, because in her moment of hesitation her shadow and the man’s shadow link and turn on him, and when she looks up she finds Shikamaru squatting in a tree, flanked by Ino and Choji, with Asuma already going to back up Kakashi and the three ANBU.

“He can’t,” she stops, her hands on her knees, looks up again, “He’s immortal!”

“Sakura,” Ino drops down, drags Sakura out of the man’s immediate proximity so Shikamaru can thread him with shadows.

“Choji,” Shikamaru says, and the ease with which he is holding the grey-haired man is a testament to his training, “or, Sakura, get us a hole, a deep one.”

It just takes one glance between them for Choji to dive down and juggernaut into the earth, reappearing from the deep hole as Sakura approaches the man again, sends a flurry of chakra scalpels at him that dismember his ligaments and tear up his insides, and Shikamaru directs Ino to send explosive tags at him as well. It is more of a struggle for Shikamaru to drag the man over to the pit that Choji has made, and avoiding the ritual circle at the same time. He is maybe urged on by a punt or two from Choji, who gets clear as soon as he’s in the pit and held by all of the shadows that the darkness of the earth holds.

“Get away,” Shikamaru says, finally standing and dropping his jutsu, and in the same breath detonating the explosive tags all but coating the man. There’s enough of them that it causes the hole to collapse in on itself, and it’s easy enough for Choji to expand the size of his hand and scrape the pile of rocks he had removed over the divot that is left.

Things get a little more difficult after that, because while they are quite a distance from the other three battles, at this point, that does not mean that they are _adequately_ far away. Swampy water explodes from where Gai and his team and their backup went, permeates the ground they’re standing on and Sakura only just manages to grab the wounded ANBU off the ground.

They take off as a wedge toward the spouts of fire denoting the other Akatsuki and Asuma and Kakashi, Sakura at the back with the woman bleeding on her back.

There is no time for them to take in the situation or recoup when they arrive in valley that the fight is in, and Sakura leaves the ANBU in a distant tree because as soon as she sees Kakashi she knows that he’s in a tight place. The man is not so much a man as a man with several masked _things_ attached to his body. Two of them split off and spout fire and wind that combines and turns into an inferno directed at Asuma and the ANBU nin, and Kakashi is doing his best fighting off the man himself, and a mask that is half-connected to him with the thick threads that had held his arm to his body.

“Sakura!” Kakashi yells when he sees her, dodges out of the way with perfect timing.

Sakura obliges, slams her fist into the man’s chest with a yell of “Shannaroooo!” and the mask that hasn’t yet separated from his body shatters into the heart behind it, but there is still a heart in the man’s body and two other thread-monsters that are doing a fairly good job at scattering all of the Konoha nin.

She goes back to hanging out of the way, watches the three ANBU deal with the mask that is spewing fire chakra while she gets the dragon-masked ninja in good enough condition to let their backup-backup ANBU team transport her from the battlefield.

They do, a deer-masked man taking the wounded nin on his back and disappearing back for Konoha, while Sakura turns back to find the battle over, courtesy of a Raikiri on Kakashi’s part and a rather fantastic bout of teamwork on Ino-Shika-Cho’s. Sakura is well enough after the two nin are killed--or, in the grey-hair’s case, fucking buried and left to die of malnutrition--to see to Kakashi’s burned hands before they go off after Naruto and Sasuke.

Ino doesn’t tip-toe around the topic when she falls in beside Sakura, asks rather bluntly, “Do you have enough chakra for this?”

Sakura checks her reserves, and really she has more chakra than she can remember storing over the past four years. It’s more than enough. “Yeah,” Sakura says, letting Asuma over-take her so he can talk to Kakashi. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about Gai-sensei’s team.”

The explosion of swampy water that they had seen earlier is still present, and mere moments after Sakura mentions Gai’s team Asuma signs, to his own team, that they are going to back up the other man and his students. Ino squeezes Sakura’s hand and disappears after her teacher, Shikamaru and Choji following after her.

Following the other three is easy but worrisome, because there is a lot of burning, a lot of fires still smouldering in the woods between torn-down and otherwise completely destroyed trees. They move carefully but not slowly, and ultimately they do find them, at least four miles inside the Land of Water.

Naruto and Sasuke are in the middle of what would probably be most appropriately called a crater. Sasuke is unconscious but tears are still sliding down his face and down Naruto’s neck, courtesy of the blond holding him on his back.

Naruto’s voice is raw when he speaks, says, “He’s dead.”

“Where?” Kakashi asks, and Naruto shakes his head.

“He asked me to seal him--his eyes,” Naruto holds up one of the number of scrolls that are always on his body.

An explosion in the distance rocks the very ground they are standing on, and Kakashi sends two of the ANBU after it, presumably to where Gai and his team and Team 10 are. “We can discuss this later,” he says, “for now we need to get back to Konoha.”

“Gai and Asuma?” Sakura asks, adjusting her gloves and letting the amount of chakra being released from her seal dwindle and stop.

“They have back-up,” Kakashi says, reties his forehead protector and takes Sasuke from Naruto, who looks a little shaky.

“Let me,” Sakura goes to help, passes a cursory hand of buzzing green chakra over Sasuke as she does. At first it seems normal, just as though he’s sustained a rather large amount of damage from using Susano-o for a prolonged time, as well as the typical sorts of wounds, but her chakra reaches his eyes and she curses, hefts Naruto onto her own back, “We need to get him back, _now_. His eyes are deteriorating.”

They travel at a rapid pace, and by the time they reach Konoha Kakashi is close to exhaustion, but Sakura is still feeling the effects of her seal and feels fine. Tsunade herself intercepts them at the hospital, gets one look at Sasuke’s eyes and curses as her student had.

But he is in good hands after that, because Tsunade has seen the type of deterioration that affects the eye after use of the Sharingan, and when Sakura mentions that Naruto has sealed away Itachi’s eyes--a bizarre last request in her own mind--she actually grins.

Sakura is dismissed, and Shizune is called in to help Tsunade with Sasuke, so she turns to help get Naruto in a room. He only has bad chakra exhaustion and some low-grade burns from fight, but he’s limp and heavy to carry, like a big baby. Kakashi is also nearly to the point of chakra exhaustion, but he doesn’t need to be hospitalized. Sakura takes them home.

Ino is in better shape than Sakura, but she is nonetheless exhausted when they return, and the first thing she does is sit at the kitchen table (where they are already eating dinner) and tell them what they missed. Gai’s team and the ANBU did have trouble with the missing nin--whose name was Kisame, or something like that, Ino cannot remember. And there was very little they could do as back-up, but finally they had cornered the man, only to have him trap himself in a globe of water, and summon half a dozen sharks that ripped his body apart. Gai and Asuma had brought Kisame’s massive sword back to be returned to Kirigakure.

As soon as Ino is done speaking, she grabs Sakura and drags her to the bath. It’s just the two of them, and Sakura is most definitely not complaining when, after they’ve washed and are sitting in the hot water, Ino gently rubs her back, hums to get some of the remaining terror and adrenaline out of both of their bodies.

She almost falls asleep, but gets out of the water before she does, and there’s only one light that she can see on in the main house, the one in Iruka and Kakashi’s room.

“Naruto?” she asks Ino, because Ino stopped by the hospital after they did.

“He’s staying overnight,” Ino yawns, letting them into their own house, where Kiba is already in bed. “Probl’y gonna find him in Sasuke’s room in the morning.”

Kiba grumbles when they climb into bed, and each of the girls kiss him before settling, Sakura next to him and Ino next to her. “Everybody safe?” he says, and his voice is rumbling with sleep when he wraps his arms around both of them as best he can.

“As much as we can be,” Sakura says, and Ino yawns her agreement.


End file.
